By Jan Mortier* – Article sent to Other News by the author
The founding fathers of the European project had a vision, that vision was born in the context of the total devastation of World War II caused to the European continent, the twenty million people killed in the war, the devastation of the markets of all European countries, most of their industrial bases and most peoples’ lives and families were affected with catastrophic loss of their loved ones, their property and their possessions.
The vision of the founding fathers was peace and integration to foster peace, specifically through the integration by design of markets and industrial bases leading eventually to economic and then political integration —a shared civilization— After much thought of how the world crisis of World War II began and its underlying causes, it was resolved to build a free and integrating market on the European continent. The Americans also wanted a market to export to so were happy to provide the equivalent of 133 billion dollars to fund this European peace project via the 1948 Marshall Plan. It was not envisaged by the founding fathers, nor the American donors at the time, that the European project would halt its evolution at a certain point in time and not become a genuine supra-national democracy but instead remain a functionally feudal and unelected construct, far removed from the direct consent of the European popular electorate. Let alone that it would dictate policy to member states and drag them into a global war.
The fault of World War II was categorically apportioned to the Germans, who hell bent on visions of political, occultist and technological grandiosity and territorial aggrandizement invaded most European nations, rounded up civilians and mass murdered them by shooting and death camps. The horrific and accepted death camp fatalities of the Jewish people is around six million people and should never be forgotten.
Professor R.J. Rummel, who spent a lifetime researching governments killing people estimated that Nazi Germany was responsible for twenty million deaths and that battle deaths in the twentieth century (in both domestic and civil wars) were around thirty eight million killed. He also estimated that in the twentieth century alone governments killed one hundred and seventy million people through “democide” which he defined as the practice of a government mass murdering its own citizens or conquered people. He gave top billing to the USSR who he estimated killed 61.9 million of their own and conquered peoples and second billing to the Peoples’ Republic of China of who he estimated killed 35 million of their own and conquered peoples.
There were many reasons that the Allies went to war with Germany, but it was to primarily preserve their international order established after World War I and to stop Hitler’s military expansion into European states.
World War II became inevitable when Neville Chamberlain’s lengthy negotiations for peace with Adolf Hitler’s regime eventually proved futile and Germany invaded Poland on September 1st 1939. On September 3rd 1939 Mr. Chamberlain gave a radio broadcast where he said “consequently this country [and France] is at war with Germany”. He later resigned in favor of Winston Churchill to lead the War Cabinet, who was a far more effective war time leader.
Four models for cooperation and victory were deployed by Churchill to defeat Hitler. 1. Political union with and governance of France and her military assets in the event France was invaded by Germany; 2. An alliance with the Soviet Union to defeat the common German enemy; and 3. Marshalling the dominions of empire to fight alongside England. Most of Churchill’s wartime speeches were of a supranational context of Britain with their multi-national empire, together in a common cause. 4. An alliance with the United States of America and the joint statement of the Atlantic Charter on 14 August 1942, which laid the foundations and rules for the post war international order, which resulted in the United Nations system.
After World War II Churchill gave a speech in Zurich in 1946, where he said “the first step to recreating the European Family of justice, mercy and freedom was to build a kind of United States of Europe.” He did not necessarily mean that Britons should join their continental friends in this endevour but he did say in 1957 that “We genuinely wish to join a European Free Trade Area”.
What Churchill would have said about the arrangement of the European structures that has executives presiding who are not democratically elected by the European people we can only imagine. In that sense, European democracy, such as it is, is an unfinished business. Nor will we know what Churchill would think about some European leaders creating censorship units to control citizen debate and thought across Europe today under the guise of “preventing misinformation.” We do know that Churchill believed in international alliances and mechanisms to avoid the causes of war and he was resolutely pro-freedom because he said “Everyone is in favour of free speech”. Preserving freedom was a key justification to the people for their sacrifice in the allied war against the German tyranny. Europe should be mindful of this.
Britain lost its empire as a result of the cost of World War II, and was relegated to a second power at the 1945 Yalta Peace conference with US President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin. The allies saw as a win, the agreement by Stalin to join their proposed United Nations system. However, Stalin was more interested in his own win in securing the agreement of the allies to his sizeable territorial gains, which led to the division of Europe and ultimately the Cold War.
Much of both the post war international economic and political orders were discussed and designed in the world order study group in London which had the involvement of John Maynard Keynes and the world parliamentarian Lionel Curtis, who achieved fame for his speech at the 1918 Paris Peace conference and his 1938 book Civitas Dei. — which was the inspiration for the 2002 founding of Civitatis International.
Curtis’s idea of a world parliament, which he spent his later years advocating for, was never implemented as the post-war powers preferred inter-governmentalism. Curtis knew that as long as we have nation states competing for resources we will have war. He called for an “International Sovereignty” to ensure an end to all war.
The origins of the contemporary wars can be traced to the unresolved issues and frozen conflicts of the Cold War. The Cold War can be traced to the unresolved issues of the Second World War and the origins of that war can be traced to the unresolved issues of World War I. The origins of World War I can be traced to the countless feudal wars in European history.
Humanity may be enslaved into a state of permanent war with only interregnums of peace, but that does not mean that men and women of goodwill should not seek out ways to make a better world possible and work for permanent peace among nations even if that lasting peace comes beyond their lifetimes.
World War I was catastrophe for mankind. It was a feudal war, a result of endless plotting and coveting of each others resources and territories by feudal suzerains. One only has to go to the palaces of Dresden to see both the ostentatious wealth and futility of the geopolitics of feudalism, where the House of Wittin was permanently at war with the French for around two hundred years even though France was several principalities away.
On both occasions after the two world wars, leaders and diplomats attempted to create a world order predicated on peace and dialogue, in an attempt to resolve disputes before they led to kinetic warfare. The mantra was “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war in the pursuit of peace”. One might observe that the world still lacks the perfect mechanism for this, as war is still a very awful reality in many locations around the word today for many people.
Historically there is a pattern among the story of nations: a state advances in technology, size, capability. It then requires more resources compelling it to expand or collapse, so its leaders seize new resources and territories to fuel their long economic cycles. Where these resources are also the strategic interest of other states, kinetic war and large scale loss of human life usually ensues. It is taboo within the field of international relations to say so, but one can find resources and the desire for resources as the underlying reason for nearly every war that has a human story in modern times.
The world needs a high-level panel of experts to figure out a way of ensuring states do not come into armed conflict for resources. The current thinking seems to be abolish the nation-state, as in the case of the European Union, but then you only create a bigger state that comes into conflict with other big states. The other thinking seems to be to deal with resource scarcity and competition for resources by limiting consumption or population growth. None of these ideas offer a lasting nor humane solution.
When I was working for a Secretary General of the Club of Rome (I worked for two), at their HQ near Zurich there was much positive discussion about the concept of a Steady State Economy, attributed to Professor Herman Daly to deal with the finite resources problem in a way that is complementary to world’s ecological problems. At the Club of Rome, during that time, we generally termed all the world’s complex problems (political, social, economic, technological and environmental etc.) as “the world problematique.” This would imply that there needs to be a “world resolutique”. A term they had coined too, in their reports.
Many are still searching for the global answer for the world resolutique. Years prior to my sojourn to Switzerland I was in correspondence with Dr. Alexander King who co-founded the Club of Rome about political models as solutions, specifically my proposal for a [world federation] [https://paxeuropa.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/beyond-the-state-the-sovereign-citizen-and-the-omega-point-of-global-politics/] to replace the United Nations. The problems of the world are many, but the pressing challenge for the world today, right now, is the avoidance of a third world conflict. It is the systems rather than mere structures that we need to change, and I would say that all proposals are and still should be on the table as the promises of globalisation proved to be falsehoods that only enriched the few at the expense of the many who became impoverished.
As a vista for future models of peace, the world is not intellectually ready for a Steady State Economy nor for a Resource Sharing Economy, the first of which would consign to history technological progress, materialism and likely population growth in exchange for peaceful existence between peoples who would likely be apportioned a fixed income and fixed resource use and no doubt limited aspirations.
A complimentary sub-idea to a Steady State Economy is the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI), it has become popular and one might imagine that in Europe, two hundred and fifty euros a week would give a modest living for most people, it is akin to some state pensions amount in any case, and the people could spend it on what they want. However, immediately problems arise with this model in that, this modest amount given to every citizen becomes 780 billion GBP a year for the UK alone due to its greatly expanded population of over ten million new people in the last decade.
UBI as an aspect of a potential solution to scarce resources doesn’t work with rising living costs such as mortgages, rents and utilities. Which look set to cause a financial implosion of Europe. UBI would necessitate some sort of centrally organized system that provides free housing and free or minimal costs of utilities to all. i.e. abolish rents, mortgages and utility bills. We are told that the Soviet attempt at this model could not be sustained in the face of a changing world. However, if a plan for free housing for citizens was introduced across Europe, without the control and taking people away to be shot that plagued the Soviet model most Europeans would probably jump at the Steady State Economy model in an instant.
Another model for future peace is a Resource Based Economy. This model consigns to history money and all that entails, but enables technological progress through a centrally controlled system that defines the direction of society in most policy aspects. A technocracy if you will. It only works if there is a consensus in society not to change the centrally organized system and a willingness of the people to go along with their assigned roles for the greater good of society. Most bankers would object, to say the least, despite the long term corporate trend leading to one company owning everything on Earth —which would, in essence, become a return to feudalism.
Precedents, in history may exist for a Resource Based Economy. In ancient Egypt, the system paid people with food to build a monumental civilization for thousands of years which was very nice for the Kings but probably not too enjoyable for the serfs. Interestingly, when I visited the Pyramids and the museums of Egypt —which everyone should do at least once to see the wonder of what went on Earth before us, and to imagine if what was once could be possible once again, if only humanity cooperated —the Egyptians themselves reject the colonialist theory that they were slaves instead saying that they built the monuments as a religious service voluntarily.
In times of modern total war, states become resource based economies, the government directs all economic activity and therefore employment. Employment becomes full employment and GDP increases about ten per cent in large wars. People all have their assigned roles and there is cohesion both enforced and voluntarily in society. All social problems are eclipsed by the bigger problem at hand: War. With a good victory there can be a forgetting of what went before, so the system rebuilds afterwards, keeps the economic machine turning and continues this macabre cycle of mass death ad infintum.
This was the case until the prospect of nuclear war was realised by humanity eighty years ago. Where even the most wealthy elites would not wish to survive what comes after widespread nuclear war, which is basically a Mad Max style society of desperate and deformed cannibals hunting for any food and fuel who will find the bunkers that the elites are hiding in and put them in a pot to cook and eat them.
A new thinking in foreign policy benevolently transpired within the consciousnesses of leaders across East and West when they realised that the only option was to talk to avoid the Nuclear Armageddon posed by the Cuban Missile Crisis. It showed to us all that the traditional means and ways of geopolitics that beset elite thinking pre-World War I and Pre-World War II, —and for most of human history—which is the primary cause of war —needs to also be consigned to history. I was once at a conference of generals in London and an amazingly simple and effective solution to end a protracted and expensive war was suggested by a speaker: “Just declare victory and leave.”
Nuclear weapons compel peaceful resolution of conflict between nuclear powers. They actually compel peace. Nukes create peace. The trouble is contemporary leaders have mostly forgotten this, as they never saw an above ground nuclear test or blast.
For those who openly call for a conventional war of Europe against Russia, (which would entail mobilisation and the draft for all youth and men of fighting age in the EU and the UK), maybe everyone should know that the Russians have an entirely different world view and history to us.
Over dinner once, a former Russian ambassador said to me, “Mr Mortier, we don’t even believe in your Westphalian conception of sovereignty.” That was quite an eye opener. Today’s European leaders have gone rouge within the western defense architecture and are still enacting the Biden agenda of War with Russia, despite Mr Trump’s landslide electoral victory of over 77 million votes and his ultimate command of NATO.
The Americans could leave NATO if the Europeans persist in their rouge desire to continue the conflict with Russia to mask their failed economic policies of “green growth” which have impoverished the European people and quietly been no longer mentioned eclipsed instead by all the new talk of war. The Trump administration has repeatedly stated that this war is “Europe’s problem” and that it should be resolved.
The notion that a large scale conventional kinetic war of all against all, (in Europe) would not quickly turn nuclear is misguided to say the least. Do our munificent European leaders recall the bad old days of the Cold War, when Jim Lipp of the Rand Corporation —which famously invented the term “Mutually Assured Destruction” and “Deterrence— calculated during war gaming for nuclear war between the USA and the Soviet Union, that “in the best circumstances nearly two million people in Europe would be killed with the use of a hydrogen bomb in Europe.”?
A former leader, I admire for helping bring about the end of the Cold War, asked me over lunch once, “Tell me Jan do you think the Chinese model should be imposed on the world?”. I replied instantly: “ No. There should be peaceful co-existence between the great powers until such time as they figure out among themselves how to build a new world civilization”. I still stand by this statement as the most sensible course of human socio-economic evolution because human systems that expand for resources always come into conflict with other human systems and today, between the big powers that risks global nuclear war. Today, now more than ever we are at the most risk of a nuclear detonation on the European landmass. Perhaps it will be as Professor Hall Gardner forewarned us “a wake up blast.”
Eventually humanity will integrate and probably become one universal state, many cultures believe it has occurred in human history before, the challenge is not to be like the scientists of Atlantis and blow us all up; nor like the Mayan civilization, obsessed with human sacrifice, nor like the Egyptian civilization that had perpetual serfdom and dynasties but impressive monuments. We need to find a new model, a new system, a new world civilization. This task is up to our leaders and those who advise them.
The systems with which we govern ourselves, or are governed by, are clearly collapsing across the geopolitical divide around the world as each society marches blindly towards a tech AI dystopia of registering, censoring, controlling and then enslaving their citizens. History has shown, like in the Nazi created Jewish Ghettos of Europe, that the process of registration of a population can quickly lead to their extermination.
The human economic activity has been disastrous for the planet’s ecosystems. The World Wild Life Fund’s 2022 Living Planet Report claims that there has been a 69% decline in monitored wildlife populations since 1970. Population limiting measures are not the answer, as that could lead to the collapse of nations and civilization. Thoughtful use of scarce resources may be the answer. We must appreciate what nature provides to us. Left to her own devices Mother Earth would do quite well without our interference in her perfect systems and processes. We don’t need to poison her skies, land, rivers and oceans. As a species we can learn from this observation and develop human systems more in harmony with the Earth’s natural systems and each other, this would be a new paradigm and universal culture of peace.
Humanity is a wonderful species of many cultures each and every one of which has a shared consciousness and fundamental human rights in an interdependent world. We can choose to have a wonderful future and we need to find a common ground among all nations and all cultures. We need to evolve away from the thinking that resulted in the two world wars in the twentieth century and now risks a third world war in the twenty-first. This is now a matter of species survival.
We need to build a new world civilization that preserves and represents all cultures on this planet. Every culture is relevant and every culture has a history, a unique society so every culture should be preserved and not merged into one banal morass. Unity in diversity is only a valid slogan if cultural diversity is preserved. All the world’s people can share in a pro-human future, a team humanity, if you will. There is a lot we could do as a shared human civilization together if only we would build the required international structures of peace instead of competing for crumbs like captured slaves in a market place.
Right now, there are three men on this planet, who fate has placed in positions where —in this moment— they have the responsibility of decision on the course of human history: Mr Donald J. Trump; Mr Xi Jingping and Mr Vladimir Putin. It is only these three leaders because they represent the world’s three largest and most technologically advanced military and nuclear powers each holding several thousand nuclear warheads and each fully prepared to use them if need be.
The choice facing this triumvirate of leaders is both imminent and of the gravest concern. The choice they face is either to open the gates of hell and descend humanity into a third World War, destroy everything on Earth with their vast thermonuclear weapons arsenals, many of which are packed twelve warheads on one ballistic missile cone and emerge —if lucky enough to— to a radioactive toxic wasteland of several hundred years with some surviving and voracious cannibals.
Or Mr Donald J. Trump; Mr Xi Jingping and Mr Vladimir Putin can have a sit down together and build among themselves and their trusted diplomats a G-Three, and thrash out in conversation and negotiation how they wish to re-order the world like Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin did amongst themselves and their teams at the Potsdam and Yalta conferences. It would be the ultimate deal and it would save an estimated seven thousand lives a week. It may as well be done now, as this would be done after a large war in any case—assuming anyone survives.
No doubt, many will clamour to get in on this G-Three process, as they tried to recently with a bilateral process—and to wreck it— but the nature and severity of what faces mankind now, as three major nuclear powers seriously consider kinetic conflict with each other —which would no doubt wipe out Europe first— means that the smaller powers should be told to “shut up and stay out of it” while the big guys sort things out between them in their own triumvirate.
An inspiration comes from the 2002 Morgan Freeman and Ben Affleck Film, “The Sum of All Fears”, in which Russia and the USA are about to go to full nuclear war because terrorists detonated a nuke on US soil to provoke the USA into striking Russia. The leaders by a miracle moment of restraint avert war and opt for reason and dialogue to de-escalate the situation. The leaders then have a nice peace conference, with good public relations for all sides and sign new peace and arms treaties between themselves. Meanwhile their respective secret services are commanded to cooperate, in that moment, to take out the terrorists who detonated the nuke.
More could be written on how a G-Three of these three leaders, could in time become a new G8; G20 and G77 or even a new world organisation to replace the increasingly obsolete other ones. No doubt the three leaders would enjoy doing this; and many future micro-conflicts and even migration flows in the world could be solved by looking again at the divisions caused by the colonial era borders in the third-world. Or they can rely on the oldest principal of international law, the ancient right of conquest and settle their disputes that way and see where that takes us all.
The urgent matter now facing these three super-power leaders is: Should they build a triumvirate for dialogue amongst themselves; work out a framework for meaningful discussions and organise a face to face meeting to resolve the world crisis – its cause and cure.
*Jan Mortier is the founder of Civitatis International [https:www.civitatisinternational.com]. He was also the Rapporteur for the World Political Forum in its early years.